


Catching Signals That Sound In The Dark

by Enneara



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masks, Needles, Pseudo-Incest, Roleplay, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17552600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enneara/pseuds/Enneara
Summary: ‘What was Kamerov Loste but a version of Kell he had invented for himself, a version he was allowed to desire?’ After an intense bout in the Essen Tasch, Rhy tends to Kamerov’s — sorry, Kell’s — injuries, and his own sympathy pains. Identity confusion, mild roleplay, and buried desire coming to light. Set during AGOS.





	Catching Signals That Sound In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all the Kell/Rhy shippers, especially everyone who commented on [The Needle That Sings In Your Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13467792) \- you’re the reason I kept working on this. Not a sequel, more a sort of alternative way this pairing could happen. Title from ‘Two-Headed Boy’ by Neutral Milk Hotel.

\----

Rhy paced his rooms, waiting. Nervous without knowing why, he checked everything again: the refreshments on the sideboard, the tub steaming in the corner behind the screen, the needle and thread on a tray by the couch. Yes, all was ready. He stretched, feeling the phantom pain of the muscles in his side.

A knock on the door, and a strange thrill. ‘Enter,’ he called.

Hastra opened the door and bowed, perfectly serious. ‘Kamerov Loste, _mas vares_.’

‘Excellent. Show him in.’

Rhy caught a wink from Hastra as he backed out. In his wake, a tall, commanding figure swept in, masked and clothed in a silver jacket. As Hastra closed the door behind him, he bowed deeply. ‘My prince,’ he said in an unfamiliar voice.

Rhy had designed the mask, and he still had to take a breath. For a dislocating second, he thought the real Kamerov Loste had been delivered to his room by mistake. When he remembered there was no real Kamerov Loste, he knew a moment of odd disappointment.

‘Rhy?’ Kell, his posture loosening as he stepped out of character.

Rhy shivered. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just — too good. I barely even recognize you.’

‘Stop complimenting yourself.’

Rhy shook his head in wonder. ‘The mask would do nothing if you didn’t wear it with conviction.’ He eyed his brother as he pulled off the mask, messing up his hair with a motion that was characteristically Kell. ‘I think you’re enjoying a break from being yourself.’

‘More than you know.’ Kell laid the mask down regretfully on the sideboard. ‘In fact, I’m thinking I might just make this permanent. Being Kamerov Loste is so simple. He fights, he sleeps, he eats expensive cheese.’ Kell filched a chunk from the spread Rhy had laid out.

Rhy took his shoulders and steered him away, directing him to the tub behind the screen. ‘He takes a bath, because he smells like pulverized Veskan.’

Kell smiled and went where he was told. A silver jacket draped itself over the screen, followed by the rest of his clothes. Rhy felt the rush of pleasure as he slid into the hot water.

‘So,’ said Kell. ‘What excuse did you come up with for having an Essen Tasch competitor brought to your rooms?’

Rhy coughed meaningfully.

‘Never mind,’ Kell said after a moment. ‘I figured it out.’

‘Thank the saints. I thought I was going to have to explain it to you.’

Kell sighed. ’Just tell me my cue for starting the debauched noises.’

Rhy’s laugh came with a rush of surprise. He was used to flirting with Kell, did it these days without even thinking about it. What he wasn’t used to was Kell flirting back. The tournament had loosened him up, let out some of the tension that had been building in him since their bond. ‘I can’t even imagine you making debauched noises,’ he said frankly.

‘Your loss,’ Kell said mildly.

Rhy did another double-take towards the screen. He was finding it hard to believe it was really Kell back there. Part of him was still convinced it was Kamerov, stretching his long limbs in the hot water, tilting his head back against the rim of the bath to bare the arc of his throat. Rhy pushed the image away. Intrusive fantasies about his brother’s alter ego had not been part of his plan for the evening. He blamed the bath: the strange sensuality of feeling himself caressed by warm water, his insistent awareness of Kell’s nakedness that made him continually look down to check he was still clothed.

‘Come out of there,’ he announced. ‘The fun part’s over. I need to stitch you up.’

He felt Kell climb out of the water. A shiver moved across him in sympathy, then the soft friction of a towel. He closed his eyes to the sensation.

‘I still don’t understand why the healers can’t do this,’ Kell said.

Rhy sighed. ‘Because the healers _know_ you, Kell.’

‘You could have hired someone else.’

‘What, and waste all the training I’ve been doing?’

A pause, then Kell’s bewilderment. ‘Since when?’

Rhy looked at the screen as if he could see through it. ‘I’ve always known that if anything ever happened to me, you could heal me with a touch. Whereas if anything happened to you, I’d have to try and fix it the hard way.’ He smiled. ‘So I’ve been learning the hard way.’

‘Rhy,’ Kell said, in remonstrance and love.

Rhy shook his head. ‘It was about time I put my mind to something more than pretty boys and girls.’

Kell came round the corner of the screen, a towel draped around his hips, rubbing his hair dry with another. ‘So you could move on to bruised, vulnerable Essen Tasch competitors?’

Rhy took him in, the familiarity and the utter strangeness of him: a lean, muscled man who moved through his rooms with dangerous grace. The seal over his heart was a copy of Rhy’s own, although without the scar from the wound that had made it necessary. For the first time, Rhy felt the full enormity of what Kell had done, how it represented a love he simultaneously couldn’t fathom and yet knew from the inside. If their positions had been reversed and the choice available to him, he knew it would have been no choice at all.

‘What?’ Kell said uneasily, running a hand through his hair. ‘Did I miss a spot?’

‘No. Um. Lie down.’ Rhy pointed distractedly toward the couch. He didn’t know if it was the fact that Kell had come in here in a mask, but thoughts of Kamerov kept intruding, even as he drew close and focused on the wound. A deep, narrow gash in Kell’s side marked where a shard of ice from the Veskan contender had continued after shattering a piece of armor. Rhy touched the edges, feeling the sting. ‘This is going to hurt me precisely as much as it hurts you,’ he said, taking up the needle and thread.

‘Good,’ Kell grunted.

As Rhy slid the needle in, he felt it pass through his own flesh. He steeled himself, caught his breath, matched his exhalation with Kell’s. As he worked, the pain throbbed between them like a ringing chord, until Rhy couldn’t tell who held the needle and who was being mended. Finally, he tied off the thread and sat back, dropping his head between his legs. ‘I didn’t faint,’ he said with weak pride.

Kell’s hand groped out to hold his. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘We’re not finished. Stand up.’ Rhy could still feel the echo in his own body of the strain in Kell’s back, stretching round from his right side. He felt for the tender knots in the muscles and dug his fingers in.

‘Aaah.’ Kell groaned in satisfaction. ‘When did you get so good at this?’

Rhy smiled. ‘I’ve always had a natural healing touch.’ He moved his hands, feeling the sweet ache spread through his own muscles. ‘Anyway, it’s pure selfishness. It makes me feel better too.’

‘Good,’ Kell said, his voice low, almost Kamerov’s again. Then, as Rhy’s hands worked at him, ‘ _Fuck_.’ He shuddered in relief. ‘Oh, that’s so good.’

Rhy had always loved giving physical pleasure. The only thing he loved more was making Kell feel good: making him smile or laugh or forget for a moment the hundred things that weighed him down. Doing both at once was a heady, confusing cocktail. He felt pleasure building until he couldn’t tell if it was his or Kell’s, only that it was deep and hot and aching. He dug his fingers in harder. Kell moaned and arched his back. Rhy didn’t know when they’d both gotten hard, but they were, and now he was thinking about it, Kell almost naked and the two of them hard together, and it was so close to something he had barely let his half-awake self imagine that he didn’t dare to breathe for breaking it. He waited for Kell to laugh and apologize, for them to agree to step away until they had both calmed down. But Kell just kept breathing, low and heavy, and Rhy kept touching him, pressure changing subtly to caress. _When will we stop?_ he thought giddily. And then, with abandon, _What if we don’t?_

Kell made a sound, ambiguous between protest and encouragement. Rhy froze, caught in the unique torture of knowing his brother’s body but not his mind. Did Kell want this as much as Rhy was realizing he did? Or was this something Rhy was inflicting on him, something he would never have asked for? The conviction grew in him with slow horror, that what he had told himself was a gift for Kell was nothing but the worst kind of self-indulgence. What was Kamerov Loste but a version of Kell he had invented for himself, a version he was allowed to desire?

Rhy bit his lip, caught between guilt and the buried wanting he had shoved down for years, glittering now in the wild light of what was building between them. In a few moments, any control he had had over this situation would be gone. If he was going to stop it, he had to stop it now.

‘Kell —’ He faltered, drawing his hand away.

Kell half-turned his head and spoke one word under his breath. ‘Kamerov.’

**

Kell felt Rhy’s rush of arousal as his own. 

‘Kamerov,’ Rhy echoed. His hand, withdrawn, alighted again on Kell’s back, rested there with new intent. Kell felt Rhy’s breath on his neck. He shuddered with terror at this irrevocable thing he had done with a single word. Because, right now, he didn’t want to be Kell: he wanted to be Kamerov, because Kamerov was allowed to want this.

‘I watched you fight,’ said Rhy, trailing his fingers across the muscles of Kell’s back.

Kell swallowed. ‘Yes, my prince.’

Rhy swayed forward. ‘The way you moved. I couldn’t take my eyes off you,’ he growled into Kell’s shoulder.

Kell closed his eyes, arousal flooding his senses. ‘Fuck. I — I wanted you to watch me.’

Rhy whimpered, and his hands tightened on Kell’s back. His mouth dragged along Kell’s shoulder to his neck. Kell’s mouth fell open in a silent gasp, overwhelmed with sensation and shame. 

Rhy tried to turn him around, but Kell resisted. ‘The mask,’ he ground out.

‘Yes,’ Rhy breathed. He left Kell for a moment, came back to settle the mask on his head, fingers tangling in his hair. He turned him slowly until they faced each other.

Kell already knew by sensory echoes how far gone Rhy was, but it was something else to see his face: eyes glazed with desire, fixed on Kell’s mouth where the mask left it bare. They hovered, unbearably close, breathing each other’s breath. Kell knew the line had been crossed the moment he had said Kamerov’s name, but the reality on the other side was still fragile: it would collapse if he let himself or Rhy remember who he was. He pushed Kell away, focused on being Kamerov. To him, Rhy would be a conquest: the beautiful, flirtatious princeling who had invited him back to his rooms with an unmistakable offer.

‘Are you my reward?’ he asked, hands tender and savage at Rhy’s neck.

Rhy could barely speak. ‘Fuck, yes, I’m yours, I’m yours.’ Then their mouths were on each other, and Kell was backing him greedily toward the bed. It was amazing how what had seemed so complicated, so impossible, was now as simple as his hands on Rhy’s body, taking and giving pleasure, making him scream any name he cared to give him.

They rolled over on the bed, words dissolving into a frenzy of shared, amplifying need. Afterwards, Kell would remember only fragments. Touching Rhy, his oil-slick hands everywhere they had wanted to be, as their mouths crushed together in desperate want. Buried to the hilt in him, feeling every movement in his own body, a perverse oneness deeper than he could fathom. The moment Rhy went to pieces and started pleading, roleplay forgotten, ‘Kell, fuck, give it to me, I need this, Kell, _Kell_ —’ He muttered obscenities under his breath and sped up his desperate motion, sparing his last moment of sanity to hope Rhy's guards weren’t listening. When they came, Rhy barely needed Kell’s hand on him, caught up in the obscene pleasure of fucking and being fucked at once.

Afterwards, they lay for a long time in sweaty, tangled oblivion. When Kell heard Rhy’s voice, it took him a moment to be sure which one of them was speaking.

‘This — this is what I always wanted.’ Rhy’s hand moved up Kell’s neck, caressing the mask. ‘You, but not you. Or a way I could deny it was you.’

Kell laughed. ‘Always?’

‘Since I was fifteen, at least.’ Rhy rolled over, sleepy, satisfied eyes seeking Kell’s but not finding them. ‘There’s this fantasy I used to have back then. I never really understood it until now.’

Kell buried his face in Rhy’s neck, feeling the cold touch of the metal on his own skin. He inhaled Rhy’s scent, caring for nothing outside the span of where their bodies touched. ‘Tell me more.’

Rhy’s fingers moved softly at the nape of Kell’s neck as he talked. ‘You remember that show the players put on when they came to court that winter? _The Sweetheart’s Gamble_ , or whatever it was called?’

Kell snorted. ’It was a play, not a show. And it was called _The Lovers’ Gambit_.’

‘Right. Remember the part where Jacinna thinks she’s sleeping with Timos, but really it’s Avise, only it’s dark and she can’t tell the difference?’

‘The bed-trick,’ Kell filled in.

Rhy rolled onto his back, eyes dark and dreamy. ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head. I didn’t know why, but I thought it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. I used to imagine waking to a stranger in my bed, touching and kissing me.’

Kell made an aggrieved sound. ‘Speaking as the person charged with your safety, this sounds like a dangerous fantasy.’

‘Of course it is. That’s what makes it a fantasy.’ Rhy pushed him gently in the shoulder. ‘Anyway, I’m realizing now that in my head, it was never really a stranger.’

Kell began to catch on. Softly, he laughed. ‘Ah, I see. It was me, sneaking into your rooms at night to ravish you.’

‘Yes. But — secretly. Don’t you see, that’s what makes it so delicious. The idea that you would come to me, at night, and we would do everything we wanted to do to each other, until we were sore and exhausted — but you would never say your name or mine, or even speak a word. So it could be our secret, even from ourselves.’

‘Fuck.’ Kell felt a twinge of new arousal. ‘And when we saw each other the next day —’

‘Oh, that’s the best part,’ said Rhy in a deep, delighted voice. ‘Can you imagine? Meeting each other’s eyes, knowing what we’d done, pretending we didn’t? Seeing a bruise on my neck and knowing your mouth had left it there? 

‘I would comment on it over breakfast,’ Kell said.

‘Fuck, it would drive me crazy. _You_ would drive me crazy. And then that night, I’d lie here, naked and hard, waiting for you, and you would come —’

Kell slid to the edge of the bed and stood up. ‘Close your eyes.’

Rhy stared at him, delight and confusion mingled on his face. He closed his eyes.

Kell crossed the room to extinguish the lamp. In the darkness, he took off the mask and laid it down. He wasn’t Kamerov Loste: he was Kell Maresh, and he knew exactly what he wanted. He went back to the bed where Rhy was waiting, and in the dark, without a word, they came together.


End file.
